Hey guys, about 3 months ago, I bought a pair of halogen tail lights (replaced the 1157's) so they will be brighter and better (when you put on the brakes...people can see you better)....one of them has already burned out. so I'm going back the stock 1157's bulbs. They were brighter...by about 1/3. I found out the halogens only last about 400 hours (avg) whereas the stock incandesent bulb lasts about 2000 hours (avg). Cost? The halogens were $7.95 EACH whereas the incandesents were $2.95 for 2..... IMHO...I am going back stock....

 

try getting the LED's. they last longer then conventional bulbs and are brighter then halogens.u can get them at Napa, they are in the BALKAMP Performance book. just ask them to look at the X-Mas bulbs, cuz they have them in any color u can think of, including LED's.

 

i am going to try leds, they should be alot brighter and they will have a very long life.

 

I use the 2057's. Same as 1157 but brighter!

 

What about for the reverse lights? Mine are really dim. Would the LEDs or 2057's work?

 

Now, I use the halogens for back-up lights and they really light the place up!

I got them at www.sherco-auto.com .

I have never heard of 2057's. do they have the same conectors?

 

Yes, same but more wattage. You can see many of the bulbs that everyone is talking about here:

http://www.lightlens.com/coloredbulbs.htm

 

Hi Paul,
I'm messing about with LEDs at the moment. I'm trying to run 4 tail/stop lights by using 4 of the backup light lenses. In the center I was going to have amber bulbs in the outer pair as direction indicators & clear bulbs in the inner pair as backup lights. Then I can get rid of the lights hanging under the car. The tail stop will be taken care of by rings of LEDs mounted in a circle in the backup lights so that they point rearwards. What I've found is that 12 LEDs do a really good job as tail lights but I really don't think that they're brint enough for brake lights. On a sunny day I think they could get lost in the glare & at night they ain't much brighter than they were as tail lights. LEDs are very directional & when looking at them straight on they don't look bad. But from an angle, however slight from straight on, they don't look as bright. When compared to a normal 21W brake light sitting next to them they look dim. I'm trying LEDs with a wider viewing angle but the problem there is that the brightness drops off with the LEDs that have decent viewing angles (those that I've found so far). In short, I wouldn't bother with the 12LED stop/tail LED lights. My next step is to buy a 19LED bulb & see how that looks (all the LED bulbs I've seen are marked "Off road use only" so I guess that they're not quite legal?

 

Largest concern is not the brightness for a replacement bulb, but any brighter bulb also puts off more HEAT, and that can melt the plastics, maybe even the lenses.....so watch it!!!!

not true of the LED things though, at least I hope not...better not be....

GENE

 

Almost all new Class 8 Trucks and trailers and busses use LED tail and stop lamps. The tail lights have a current limiting resistor to lower the light level, with a higher current mode for brake lights. The big advantage is less current draw for more light. A standard 1057 bulb uses about 2A for tail lamps and 4A for stop lamps. A 12 LED Array will use less than 1A for full brightness (brake lamp), with about 60% for tail lamp use. Do a search on Truck Led Lighting and you will find very bright, inexpensive LED systems.

 

I saw some Xenon bulbs at Autozone yesterday. They claim a very bight white light. They run about 8 bucks each. I went with the red LED 1157 replacements and now of course i need an electronic flasher for the directionals to work.

Has anyone seen a combination white/red led? I'd like to keep the backup and have an extra brake light as well.

 

This is more or less what I'm trying to do, but I figured that the extra brake light could also be run as an extra tail light. There are LED replacement bulbs for m/cycles that combine red LEDs for stop/tail with white LEDS for licence plate illumination. Some modifications could get it working, but it'd be easier to do what I've just done (and abandoned as the brake light wasn't bright enough). I just got 10 3mm King Bright LEDs, drilled a ring of 3mm holes about 1/2" in from the outer edge of the light & mounted the LEDs in them. The ones I used had a 1.8v drop across them so I wired them as 2 parallel groups of 5 in series & stuck a 68ohm resister in there ie. current comes in, runs through the resistor & then has 2 paths back to earth, each path running through 5 LEDs wired in series. If you want to get flashy you could chuck a bridge rectifier in there to stop you having to worry about the polarity when connecting to the car's electrics. The result looked good & was a band of red light with 10 bright points in in (like the lights on a Skyline). This was nowhere near as bright as the normal brake light we use here, but as it would mean 2 extra lights coming on when you brake it would probably do the job.

Bob, thanks for the reply. Our standard stop/tail bulbs (offset pins like a 1056?) have a 5W filament for tail & 21W for stop. I've fitted LEDs to one lamp & used 2 resistors, one letting through a little current for the tail light & one to let more through for the brake light. The LEDs brightened considerably when braking with the tail light on, but only when looking directly at them (they were so bright that I saw red spots for a couple of mins afterwards!). So, not being able to get the correct brightness with different resistors I decided to cheat. There are so many different types of LED available that finding ones that work as I want could get expensive & take ages, so I bought a couple of those 1057 LED replacements that were running 12 LEDs. I took one apart, noted the resister values & that the LEDs were wired as 4 parallel chains of 3 LEDs. Fitting into the backup light (in a ring behind the red part of the lens) was easy enough & they looked OK as tail lights. When used as a brake light the step up in brightness was noticeable but wasn't good enough that I'd want to risk my life or the rear end of the Vette on it. Additionally, any traffic cop worth his salt would pull me over immmediately he saw the weak brake lights at night (or he could nick me for having exceptionally bright lights if he was looking directly at them). Fitting the other bulb into the rear light of a m/cycle gave much better results. I think the reflector in the rear of the light, coupled with the diffuser, helped there, but the Vette's back up lights have neither.
The truck lights sound good & I'll have a look at them. But I do need something that I can take apart as the lights will have to still hold an additional 21W bulb (for eather direction indicator or backup). I'm confident that I can do it, but finding the correct LED is the hard bit (once/if I do I'll post the make/model & resistors needed). I'll probably get a bulb that's used as a stop/tail & rip all of the LEDs out & mount them in my lights (that way somebody else has done all the hard work in getting the right luminosity & spread). It's easy picking resistors to control the current, but the brightness of different types of LED varies wildly, along with the viewing angle. Just to make it more awkward, it's a legal requirement for rear lights to contain a reflector, so some of the LED lights (complete) aren't an option.
My next step is an autojumble that's on soon. A guy sells LED bulb replacements that have 9 LEDS for the tail light (which, going by what I've done so far is more than adequate) & brightens them up along with switching on an additional 10 for the brake light. I reckon having the 9 LEDs facing directly backwards & then mounting the remaining 10 at angles slightly offset may get the result I want. Or just waste more time/money